The stock Gmail app is one of the best mail experiences on a mobile device, but it can still be nearly impossible to tame particularly active inboxes. XonoMail Beta has just arrived in Google Play, and it promises to keep your email in order without a ton of configuration. Best of all, it's completely free and has no ads while in beta.

XonoMail is based on the open source K-9 Mail project. The official K-9 app doesn't get a lot of attention these days, and it's UI is extraordinarily outdated. XonoMail goes the Holo route (#YOLO) and pulls multiple mail accounts into one place. The main feature being promoted here is the app's ability to automatically categorize your Gmail messages. It appends icons for apparel, social, travel, and other categories so you can easily triage your mail. Full features include:

You can test out XonoMail on your email right this minute. You get a lot more benefits with a Gmail account, but anyone still rocking non-Google mail accounts would probably enjoy having a solid unified inbox – there aren't many good third-party email apps being maintained currently.

Ryan is a tech/science writer, skeptic, lover of all things electronic, and Android fan. In his spare time he reads golden-age sci-fi and sleeps, but rarely at the same time. His wife tolerates him as few would.
He's the author of a sci-fi novel called The Crooked City, which is available on Amazon and Google Play.

Comments

Zach Blackwood

I'm using Enhanced Email for my non-gmail/personal email. The UI is also rather outdated but it works just fine. It's only used for one account, but would love a more modern looking and functional app to try out. Maybe I'll try this one.

Agree....best email app out there and certainly worth the 5 bucks ( or whatever they charge now)

Shane Milton

I also use Kaiten. It's by no means a "Wow"ing experience, but it's solid and has lots of features and its UI isn't quite as out-dated.

Francois Forrest

Not available in Canada :(

XonoMail Support

Hi Francois,
stay tuned, we will launch in Canada in few weeks.
:)

PhoenixPath

Let's all give a big "Hooray!" for developer-contributed fragmentation!

/s

I get the whole artificially limited initial support argument. Really; I do. I just happen to think it's 99% BS.

wolfkabal

I know it's beta, but already having issues trying to setup my accounts. Two standard gmail accounts. One works fine, the other throws back "username password failure". Also trying to setup a work account which uses gmail, but because the domain isn't gmail.com it spits me to 'non-gmail' setup.

Also it's annoying that I have to attempt to login twice, once for the app, and then again to verify my settings on from the browser (2-factor enabled). Why can't I just enter the email alone and have that pass over for me. The app even pops up a message saying "click Next.." but you still have to enter your password to proceed. I can't remember its like that for all apps which encounter 2-factor or not.

I like the idea of it, but I think I'll wait for it to be cleaned up a little first. Especially since I already do email forwarding and have extensive filters setup which allow me to do everything from a single account anyways.

XonoMail Support

Thanks for your feedback, that will help us to refine the app.
The double sign up issue is our priorities, right now.
Regarding your second Gmail account, make sure, you were signed in the correct account on Google webpage.

Thank you for your support, and feel free to check us back when we release the official version.

wolfkabal

Thanks! I did correctly sign in from the webpage for both accounts (required signing out of the previous).

Also as mentioned on the business accounts, it'd be nice if maybe there was a flag the user could set indicating that the account should be treated as a google account. Since all authorization is the same. This way, it'd retain all the "gmail" functionality that the app features.

Thanks again, looking forward to updates.

Thomas

The 1080p button, it does nothing!

http://www.androidpolice.com/ Artem Russakovskii

What am I missing here?

Thomas

I was hoping the jaggies in the movie was because of the low resolution, but it wasn't :(

Thatguyfromvienna

I love my Aquamail.

Кристијан Ристовски

APK anyone? Not available in my country.

PhoenixPath

...and this is why we can't have nice things. (decompiled/recompiled APK's filled with "malware" floating around on Play/3rd party sites)

(No; not because you want access to an APK not available to you, but because the developer has artificially excluded your region for no other reason than to limit their support needs...with no thought of any other possible consequence to the ecosystem.)

XonoMail Support

Indeed, reliability for our users email is critical, so we need to scale up gradually.
But we are working hard to bring XonoMail to non-US users as soon as we can.

Thanks for your support.

cowgar

K-9 based so still only (archaic) WebDAV protocol...

Would we ever get proper (like iOS) ActiveSync in Exchange apart from quite badly looking TouchDown? I mean Xonomail UI is nice and all, but another e-mail client without ActiveSync is as needed as another live wallpaper for Android...pointless

ah, it can *color/label* your email in 2013, ah, full of features I suppose ;)

Thatguyfromvienna

Did you try Moxier for Exchange?

wolfkabal

I'm all for ActiveSync for corporate and all, but there's a serious security flaw. The way ActiveSync uses credentials, means they're stored in memory indefinitely. I've done security assessments on most email clients that support ActiveSync, and every one of them has proven to store credentials in the clear within the memory stack. These credentials end up being, most time, your corporate network credentials. Big no no.

XonoMail Support

Hi,
We are are planning to release a paid version with Active sync support in few months. There is no reason business users should not have access to a nice UI, too!

John D

One issue I had with K9 was when you archived an email it did it's own archiving and unsynced it from the email server and you were unable to get it back outside of K9. Since this is based on K9 is the issue still there or has it been resolved?

Shane Milton

XonoMail really only seems useful if you have many different GMail accounts. Otherwise, it doesn't seem to bring a whole lot to the table. Good if you use many GMail accounts, though!

XonoMail Support

Many non-US users have been requesting the app and we are working hard to provide a version for everyone.
Our Servers cannot categorize email that is not in English yet unfortunately.
We are only available in the US but we will soon release the app in other English speaking countries.

Thanks for your support!

PhoenixPath

So express that the app is "English-only" for the time-being and stop the artificial fragmentation scheme...

dextersgenius

I agree with PhoenixPath. Why don't you just add a disclaimer, in CAPS if necessary, at the top of the Market page? Restricting it only to English-speaking countries is very short-sighted of you, and a tad racist, I might add. Millions of people speak and prefer English as their main language, even if they are currently living in a non-English speaking country.

Android is fragmented already, there is no need to artificially segment the market without a valid reason. If you have a valid reason, state it and we'll accept it for what it is. There's no need to lie about it.

Rob

How in the hell is that RACIST? (oO) Segregating maybe, but hardly racist.

Installed on my Nexus 4 and no categories at all. I looked at the categories settings and nothing is shown there. No icons, not a thing. I am using plain jane gmail, on Paranoid Android 4.2.2

bloodbath

I'm having the same issue. I have 2 gmail and 1 yahoo account set up. There are no categories listed when pressing the bottom left icon. There are contacts though. Without that feature, this is just a slightly different looking k9 Mail

bloodbath

Just resolved the issue. I imported my old k9 account. You must manually add them again in order for Google to ask you to provide "Authorized Access to your Google Account". If you accept this, the new account will have the Categories tab available.